Rexford Ahima, MD, PhD, will join the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) on June 1, 2016 as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Diabetes. Serving in a joint position with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, he will work closely with faculty and staff to advance clinical and research programs, educate the next generation of endocrine health experts, and serve as director of the School of Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism and leader of its Diabetes Initiative.
Dr. Ahima is currently a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Additionally, he serves as director of the Obesity Unit in the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, and as director of the Penn Diabetes Research Center’s Mouse Phenotyping, Physiology and Metabolism Core.
“We are pleased to welcome another excellent researcher and clinician to our faculty,” says Dean Patricia Davidson, PhD, MEd, RN, FAAN. “Dr. Ahima is an expert in some of the world’s most pressing health issues, and we look forward to the knowledge, experience, and interdisciplinary perspective he will bring to our work at the school.”
Research in Dr. Ahima’s laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania has focused on the relationship between energy stores and the regulation of energy balance by the brain, and how adipokines, myokines, cytokines and other circulating factors act in the brain and other organs. When he joins Johns Hopkins, Dr. Ahima will continue his research in a new laboratory that is located on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus.
Board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, Dr. Ahima did his intercalated BSc research training in endocrinology at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in the University of London, and earned his M.D. from the University of Ghana Medical School, and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Tulane University. After his Ph.D., he completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before completing research and clinical fellowship training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and joining the faculty at the Harvard Medical School.
Having published extensively in his field, he is a frequent speaker nationally and abroad. He has published more than 200 articles, reviews and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals; authored and edited several books on obesity, diabetes and metabolism; and serves on numerous academic and institutional committees. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Located in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is a globally-recognized leader in nursing education, research and practice and ranks #2 nationally among graduate schools of nursing and #6 for online programs, according to U.S. News & World Report. In addition, the school was named the “Most Innovative Nursing Graduate Program in the U.S.” by Best Master of Science in Nursing Degrees, and ranks #1 among nursing schools for Federal Research Grants and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. For more information, visit www.nursing.jhu.edu.
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